Strong opinions, weakly held

July 23, 2004 / Rafe / Comments Off on Final(?) word on the Syrian Terrorist Orchestra

One thing that really stood out in my mind when I read Anne Jacobsen’s original story about the Syrian Terrorist Orchestra was her claim that a flight attendant told her that there were several air marshalls on the plane. If she were a normal human being and not a hysterical person siezed with irrational fear, that would have immediately set her mind at ease. If there were several air marshalls on the plane, it meant that the security folks knew there was something fishy on the flight and made sure that they had officers on the plane to keep things under control. The government can’t afford to put multiple officers on every flight, or even a single officer on most flights. If there were several such officers on the plane, it indicates that the government was suspicious of something and took extra precautions. So what’s the problem? It sounds like our security apparatus worked pretty darned well, at least in this case. Anyway, this post from Kevin Drum should be the last word, as it says that there were air marshals on the flight and that they even checked the lavatory for signs of bomb assembly during the flight. I await an interview with the musician.